


Put these bodies between us

by airafleeza



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Emotionally constipated characters, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Pining, T'Challa Is A Good Man, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7450417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airafleeza/pseuds/airafleeza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world, another life, he can picture asking Bucky not to leave him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put these bodies between us

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this fic kind of came out of nowhere for me. Heavily inspired by the first credit scene for Civil War— because, yikes does that need fixing. Unfortunately, I'm not 100% if this constitutes as a "fix-it fic".
> 
> A big thank you to [Kami](http://msaether.tumblr.com) for reading over this and encouraging me to post!!

Somehow, the walk back to the quinjet requires less effort than it did leaving. Steve’s body hurts, it aches and bleeds, and even without his left arm, Bucky is heavy. Unable to pull his own weight, Steve takes it— even if the pressure is too much on his side, even if he thinks he’s broken several ribs.

Still, it’s easier to leave than he thought it would be. It isn’t until the white winds hit him, stinging his face and cut lip, that he realizes there’s no sensation of something at his back. No shield to account for. There is only Steve and Bucky for the first time in a long time.

He’d caught a glimpse of it, of the them they used to be, before stepping out into the snow, before Zemo. Underneath all that armor, if they let go of their weapons, Steve could almost see it. Now was the closest they’d come back to that. With no mission, it was only the two of them against the rest.

Head lolling to the side, hair brushing against Steve’s jaw, Bucky mumbles— his words indecipherable until the arm around Steve’s shoulder tightens and Steve finally hears the footsteps behind them. Glancing over his shoulder, Steve continues forward. He does not stop for the figure in black.

“If you’re looking for a fight…” Steve warns. He could feel his pulse quickening, preparing to turn around and defend. The surge of adrenaline in his exhausted body makes his head swim, his knees shake.

“Where will you go?” T’Challa’s voice, made deeper by his mask, is almost too low to hear from this distance, wind whipping between them.

And where would they go, just the two of them? Steve hadn’t considered it. He had no home in D.C., all his friends either locked up or in hiding. They were bleeding, or trying to kill him. He never bought that tiny brownstone in Brooklyn he’d had his eyes on. Too much money, he told himself, for a place he’d hardly be able to stay in. There was the compound, after all, free of charge.

He imagines it, if he had bought it. Taking Bucky home, cleaning him up in the bathroom. Making up a fresh bed in the spare room. Waking up in the middle of the night with Bucky’s door open because he slipped out onto the fire escape. Steve doesn’t know where Bucky in this situation would get them, but there’s half a cigarette in his one hand and he smokes as the sky pulls back and bleeds morning. Steve watches from a distance, like he used to— an old habit from his asthma. It’s all familiar. Too real and too much like a memory.

Steve inhales sharply. “The hell away from here.”

“I know of such a place.”

Focused, Steve staggers up the jet’s ramp. If Bucky protests it, he doesn’t show it. His arm, still bringing them tightly together, squeezes around Steve’s neck. Back inside, he sets Bucky down, buckling him into the co-pilot’s seat. With Bucky’s sense of balance being off, along with a few good hits to his head, Steve isn’t confident he’d manage to sit upright on his own. The moment he lets Bucky go, Steve steadies himself on the nearest wall. Bucky’s arm shoots out to grab him, but the contact never comes. His hand wavers in the space between them, Bucky’s gaze directed down.

“I’m fine,” Steve swallows, gingerly pushing off the wall. “Just going to see what he wants.”

“Be…” _careful_ , Bucky starts, and like the gesture to touch Steve, never finishes. He shakes his head, hair gone tacky to his face. “We shouldn’t stay here too long.”

 

* * *

 

T’Challa stands exactly where Steve left him— a severe break in the scenery. Taking off his mask, his eyes lock onto Steve's the moment he reappears from the jet’s entrance, like T’Challa had been expecting him or at least hoping.

“If you're looking to bring us in—” Steve begins, exhausted and unceremoniously. T’Challa holds still. Steve feels himself waver.

“I mean him no harm.” T’Challa’s face goes soft, eyes still unrelenting. “Barnes is not the man I thought him to be. I would like to rectify my previous actions.”

Automatically, Steve’s fists clench. He isn’t aware of what he’s doing until a jolt of pain runs up his arm. Enhanced leather gloves were nothing, in the end, against a metal suit. Hit after hit, impact after impact. He’s reminded what broken knuckles are like, knows even with advanced healing, he’s going to feel this for a couple days, but he can’t find it within himself to relax. At his sides, his hands remain tense and tightly fisted.

“You have no reason to trust me,” T’Challa speaks again, after a moment has passed. “I understand this.” His mouth quirks into a smile, the first Steve has ever seen since meeting on unfavorable conditions. “But you must believe that a determined man can be dangerous.”

Yes, and Steve had seen this, lived it all his life, which may have been why in that moment his guard shifted and T’Challa saw enough of that crack to brave a step forward. Face to face, T’Challa did not offer a hand: only a promise.

“I will make this right, Captain.”

 

* * *

 

Once they’ve landed on some forested facility in Wakanda, the two are first directed to the medical bay, Steve manages to unpeel his uniform, cringing at how the dried blood formed an adhesive between his skin and the fabric. Nothing a little elbow grease and water won't fix up. Bucky is a little worse for wear— his jacket they found at a sporting goods store and ripped the sleeve off hastily. It wasn’t meant to see combat like this.

Steve washes, trying to get an idea of the damage underneath. The cut on his lip looks worse than it is. His ribs are bruised. When Bucky tries to clean up, his right arm is shaking so hard it's useless. He chuckles when Steve offers to help, wincing shortly after. His right arm wraps around his own stomach.

“My god,” he grimaces. “Times have changed.”

 _Not really,_ Steve wants to add. Because this is old hat, patching each other up. Sitting on the floor with bandages and hot water, towels stained with dirt and blood. No, this is second nature. He's careful of Bucky’s nose in case it's broken. _Don't want a beak like yours_ , Bucky used to always say. He was willing to take the help that Steve wouldn’t. He’d seen what stubbornness and pride could lead to— bumps in nose bridges, poorly-healed crooked toes and fingers.

“I don't know,” Steve finally shrugs, carefully dabbing Bucky's cheek. Bucky frowns. “Pretty used to cleaning up after you, Buck. Someone has to.”

Bucky almost smiles— the corner of his eyes crinkle enough that it looks like he wants to. But something holds his mouth back.

“I wasn't a slob, you were just picky,” he swats at Steve, turning away. It’s almost a bashful gesture. Then: “hey, mind helping me set my nose? Don't think one handed is the way to go. I might end up looking like you.”

 

* * *

 

On the third day of living off T’Challa’s hospitality, Steve’s heart is broken.

It’s certainly not the first time it’s happened to him. Not even the first time in these past few weeks. Peggy’s funeral is still there, and he hadn’t expected to cry like he did but he did. The years of visiting her in D.C. and seeing how thin and gray she’d become wasn’t enough to make him ready. A youth in war wasn’t enough to ready him. He had loved Peggy in a new way he’d never loved anyone else before. She was the first and last of her kind.

“Steve,” Bucky’s voice breaks through to him. They are in the living room of T’Challa’s hideaway, alone together. “I have to do this. I can’t make things right until I get this out of me.”

It’s the conversation he’d had with T’Challa in the snow, that unshakable certainty that Steve always tries to employ behind his decisions— whenever he decides to take a stand. It’s as much a part of T’Challa as it was for him, and Bucky as well. Which is why he knows: there’s no stopping this. Bucky talks like there are no options, a victim of what’s been done to him. But he refuses to sit around and wait for them to take his mind again, and in that way— Steve is proud and numb with helplessness.

From the couch he watches Bucky circle the room, pacing. Cryo is bad memories; Steve can’t even begin to comprehend that for Bucky. For Steve there have only been grainy photos and visits to decimated factories with old units. It’s enough that he can imagine a lesser man in Bucky’s position, what they wouldn’t do. He can imagine what he himself would do. It may look the same as what Bucky is proposing, but Steve knows who’s brave and who’s stupid.

Steve can’t speak, only looks up, his mouth covered by the hand propping his head. He takes in the sight of Bucky, aware of the clock counting down. In another world, another life, he can picture asking Bucky not to leave him.

Bucky would say, “I'm not,” with a grin. It'd look sad. There's always a twinge of that behind the looks he gives Steve, starting in Bucharest. “I'm staying right here,” he’d say. “You're the one going away.”

He used to want Steve, or at least that’s what Bucky’s old glances used to suggest, and maybe he still remembers that longing. Steve sees it now, before Bucky catches himself and cuts it off. More aborted gestures. It could be important, somehow. Or it would be, if Bucky took care of himself. He uses conditioner and isn’t afraid to ask if Steve if he’s going to finish his dessert before taking it anyway, but beyond that, Bucky is learning it's okay to want. They need more time. They needed more time.

If he could, Steve would offer himself to Bucky. To be his, a consolation prize, anything. Was this love or desperation for familiar things? Steve isn’t sure, but his fingers press to his lips, and his eyes graze over the lips of the man across that room, lips he wouldn’t mind kissing. Moving over his body, sucking bruises. He could offer to stop Bucky if he was ever triggered again, if they stayed on the run, if they went around the world just the two of them. Not Captain America and the Winter Soldier **née** Sergeant Barnes. Only Steve and Bucky. Out of anyone, he was the best match to Bucky’s strength. Steve could raise his hand in the living room right now and offer to pin him down so he’d never hurt anyone ever again.

Pin him down, his mind wanders, on a bed if that would make Bucky happy. He thinks it might make him happy, too. To kiss Bucky, like Steve could press the hurt out of Bucky’s skull with the application of Steve’s mouth to his temple. Steve could remove their clothes and praise him, graze his teeth against Bucky’s scar tissue— around what remains of his left arm. He wonders if Bucky is sensitive there, if it would be a good or bad hurt. And if it would be enough to change his mind or make him forget pain and war long enough to be his old Bucky, the one he saw at the edge of the quinjet hangar before Steve crossed the line and touched him like a person.

He saw Bucky’s face fall, the disapproval. Maybe Bucky wouldn’t let himself be touched at all. He could think he doesn’t deserve it, even with Steve’s praise. Steve would tell him he loves him, and it wouldn’t be a lie.

But then it strikes Steve: they don’t do that.

Brooklyn was the closest they’ll ever be, he realizes. Even if Bucky was out past arm’s length, too busy hooking elbows with girls. But still, when summer came and they were lucky enough to get a day off at the same time, they’d sprawl out on the floor, complaining in just their shorts. Dreaming up cold lemonade and a breeze. Bucky’s body, thin but not like his. Reliable and masculine. _He was right there,_ Steve sees in retrospect. _You idiot,_ he berates himself. _Why didn’t you just touch him?_ Years later and there was the war across the ocean. More bodies put between them.

The tides could have all changed. Bucky might stay if that had been a part of their history, if they were lovers then or now. They could have fucked and used sex to squeeze the violence out of their bodies so they could sleep. At night, they would be dead to the world until morning where they’d do it all again. They would run. They wouldn’t stop. Steve thinks he wouldn’t have minded it. Their relationship had never been orthodox before.

Bucky moves in front of him. Steve lifts his head, disappointment settling in his stomach when Bucky seems to change his mind and moves to the opposite end of the couch. Steve doesn’t know what he was hoping for. Instead, Bucky runs a hand through his own hair until it’s pushed behind his ears. He releases a heavy breath, widens his legs as he digs his elbows into his own knees, leaning forward with a heavy head. A few moments pass until Bucky’s right knee bobs anxiously. He swallows, audible.

“I owe that to everyone involved,” Bucky says, rough. “And if they can’t fix me, then it’s—”

 _For the best,_ Steve knows is right. He pictures Bucky, still young and cold at the end of Steve’s life. A life of visiting Bucky when the world allows him the pleasure, his time spent wondering if Bucky can hear Steve speaking to him through the glass and chemicals. Does Bucky dream? Can you miss someone where Bucky is going?

And why, Steve wonders, is he always going to chase after what he wants? In all these different lifetimes and scenarios, why can he no longer settle? He’ll circle the earth, again and again, alone or not, until his bones are dust. How foolish he’d been to think he could escape this fight without losing something else! Blood or teeth, maybe. But Bucky? Didn't the universe tire of repeated unhappy results?

Back in his body, Steve blinks. He does not cry or speak until he is sure what his body is going to do— convincing his mouth and hands and eyes that there is only one option, one chance to make it through this.

“We can talk to T’Challa tomorrow.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "[Calculation Theme](<a%20href=)" by Metric.


End file.
